


All Hale Pastries

by NikaNielson



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Bakery, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Golden Whisk, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 09:49:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2768717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NikaNielson/pseuds/NikaNielson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Cora drops out of a cooking competition at the last minute, Stiles tries to convince Derek to take her place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Hale Pastries

**Author's Note:**

  * For [giantteenwolforgy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/giantteenwolforgy/gifts).



> I wrote this little ditty for [giantteenwolforgy](http://giantteenwolforgy.tumblr.com) during the 2014 Sterek Haven Secret Santa. Hope you like it!

The backdoor buzzer sounded for the fifth time in less than five minutes. Derek had tried cranking up the radio. He’d tried banging his butter brush pointedly against the pan. 

The buzzing continued. 

He slapped his hands against his apron and flung open the door. 

Stiles Stilinski smacked him in the nose with a closed fist. 

“Fuck!” said Stiles. 

Derek yelped and grabbed his face, backing away from the door. 

“Christ, you just—you just _appear_ , y’know?” He grabbed Derek’s elbows, jerking Derek’s hand against his nose. 

Derek hissed and marched to the freezer. Stiles stepped on his heels like a puppy going for walkies.

“God, I’m sorry. I mean, like, I don’t know who just fucking appears like you appear, but there you were, and there was…y’know…my hand.” 

He grabbed the bag of frozen strawberries out of Derek’s hand, whipped a towel off a rack, and began shoving his hands towards Derek face again. Derek wrenched the towel away and glared. 

Stiles surrendered, hands in the air. “Gotcha. Okay. Message received.” 

Stiles leaned against a counter, crossing his arms. Derek narrowed his eyes, and Stiles rolled his, but pushed away from the counter. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” said Derek, ever so slightly adenoidal. 

“I’m back!” Stiles flung his hands again, and Derek flinched. 

“You live in San Francisco,” he accused. 

“Yeah, well, there’s this thing we’ve discovered called a car, and man are you gonna flip. You can travel, like, sixty miles an hour. For multiple hours.” 

“I like you in San Francisco.” 

Stiles looked at the floor, tapping his fists together. The smile on his face twitched down for a second, and Derek had to look away. Not because he felt badly—Stiles deserved most of what he got, especially when Derek gave it to him—but because he didn’t like to look too long at Stiles’ smiles. It made him uncomfortable. Wistful. 

Looking down like that, Derek could see the way his lashes fanned out over his cheeks. His shoulders were broader. Broader than they used to be when he bustled into the shop as a kid, smearing fingerprints across the pastry display cases and harassing the cashier for free samples. 

He looked good. 

Derek walked back towards his pan of baklava. 

“I’m looking for Cora, actually.” 

Something squeezed in Derek’s stomach. He didn’t look up from the phyllo dough. 

“She’s out front.”

“Out—out—“ Stiles gestured. 

“Out. Now.” 

“Grumpy.” Stiles smirked. 

Derek frowned, and his stomach fluttered annoyingly. 

The door swung shut, and Derek pressed the strawberries against his face.

*

Five minutes later, Cora stalked back through the door with Stiles on her heels.

“Argentina?”

“Stiles—“ 

“ARGENTINA?” 

“ _Stiles_ —“

“No, no, you are done talking. Your privileges are revoked. No more talking for the crazy, insane, utterly batshit woman who is abandoning me in my hour of need, and instead going to hook up with some random toker in Argen-fucking-tina!” 

“Toker?” said Derek. 

Cora folded her arms and looked at the sinks. “Everybody smokes pot, okay? Don’t be a douche.” 

“I’m not the douche,” said Derek.

“He’s not the douche!” said Stiles. 

The Hales turned to Stiles. 

“You, young lady, are the douche!”

She rubbed her temples. 

“What the hell, Cora?”

She pressed her hands together. “I’m sorry, Stiles. I really am. I know I said I could do it, and I thought I could, but then Juan has this restaurant, and…it’s my future.” 

Stiles sighed. 

“Derek? A little help?” said Cora. 

Stiles rounded on him. The full force of it—strands of gelled hair falling into his eyes, cheekbones stained pink, hands above his ears—made Derek lick his lips. He looked away. 

“You knew,” said Stiles. “ _J’accuse_! You knew, and you didn’t tell me, you traitor. You Benedict!”

“I spoke to you for five seconds.”

“How long does it take?”

“Well gosh, sorry, Stiles, I couldn’t really fit it in between opening the door and your _fist_ colliding with my _face_.”

“You punched him?” said Cora. 

“No. No, that was not a punch. That was…a…y’know what? You _appear_. If you don’t like your bed, you just— you change the sheets and lie down.”

“That’s not how that goes,” said Derek. 

“Your face is how it goes.” 

“ _What?_ ” 

“God, would you two shut up?” said Cora. “Jesus, this is why mom kicked your asses out of the kitchen.” 

Derek looked away from Stiles. He tried not to think about the last time their mother had kicked her little helpers out of All Hale Pastries’ kitchen—both of them covered in flour and batter and breathless with their fight. 

“Actually…” Cora smiled. 

“Uh-oh,” said Stiles. 

Derek agreed. That expression was a harbinger of pain and humiliation. 

“ _Actually_ , that is a brilliant idea.” She pointed at the two of them and wiggled her hands back and forth. 

Derek narrowed his eyes. “What.”

“ _Oh_ ,” said Stiles. 

“Yes,” said Cora. 

Stiles turned to Derek. His eyes sparkled under the fluorescents. He smiled. 

Derek turned away to inspect a whisk. Possibly bent. May be time to replace it. 

“Derek.”

He should invest in some quality implements. He is sort of a professional, after all. 

“Der-Bear?”

“No.” 

Stiles whined. 

“And that’s my cue,” said Cora, making her escape. 

Stiles leaned up against the counter, his hand hanging a few inches beside Derek’s elbow. 

“You wanna put something in the oven with me, baby?” 

“You _punched_ me.”

“Oh, like I’ve never punched you before.”

Derek couldn’t help it—he smiled. 

“Okay, so,” said Stiles, flipping around to lean against the counter on his elbows. “Competition’s in ten days. Cora and I had a game plan drawn up; I’ll email you the recipes. Your email’s still the same, right? Capital-D—“ 

“No.” 

“No? You changed it? What is it? Oh god, it’s not a Hotmail account, is it? Why don’t you just get AOL like the other fogeys?” 

“No, as in no. No, I’m not doing the competition. No, I don’t want your emails. No.” 

“But…”

Derek refused to look up. He couldn’t look at Stiles right now, with his new shoulders and his familiar eyes. 

“Why not?” 

“I can’t replace Cora.”

“What, this is about skills? Derek, you’re an amazing pastry chef.” 

“No, Stiles, I’m a baker. I make cookies. I make croissants. Sometimes, on special occasions, I make coffee cake. I don’t make salted caramel bon-bons with seaweed reduction and pomegranate foam.” 

“Seaweed reduction?”

“Whatever. I can’t do it.“

“Yeah, but the thing is, you can. You’re making fucking baklava right fucking now, Derek, I am literally staring at it.”

“That's not the same thing, and you know it. And anyway, who would watch the shop?” 

“Isaac and Erica can run the shop for three days, big guy. The world will not end. The iceman will not cometh.” 

“Yeah, sure.” Derek snorted. “Still no.”

Stiles sighed through his nose. He leaned harder into the countertop, his ass swaying. Derek made a point of not looking at it. 

It was silent between them. The sounds of Cora stacking chairs filtered in. 

“Hey,” said Stiles. “Hey, you know, that’s okay. It’s okay. I get it. Except…except, Derek, man, I love this place. My mom loved this place. We came here every week, remember that?”

“Vividly,” said Derek, thinking of the display cases. 

“Yeah. And when she got sick, you know, we couldn’t come anymore. So I came by myself that one day, you remember? “

Derek shrugged. He remembered. Stiles, tiny in his winter coat, bursting into the shop with a red nose and a set jaw. 

“And I demanded that you make my mom her cookies. Your mom would’ve done it, or your dad, and you know they were going to get to it. But there was the lunch rush, and then cleaning, and prep, and then dinner, and this is a busy place.” 

Stiles pointed. “You taught me how to make cookies on that mixer over there. You did.” 

“We didn’t make cookies,” said Derek, “we made a mess.” 

“You tried.” 

“Stiles—“ 

“You saw me, and you tried, and that’s when I knew that I wanted this. A place like this. Somewhere to sell cookies, and coffee cakes, and caramel fucking bon-bons if I feel like it. This is my shot. Okay? This is it.” 

Derek chewed on the inside of his mouth. “It’s a lot of money, this prize?” 

“Enough.” 

He nodded. He looked at Stiles, finally, at the way he leaned in towards Derek’s body, his eyes wide and his hands tense. “I’m not saying we’re gonna win,” said Derek. 

“You’ll do it?” 

“I guess.” 

Stiles gripped Derek around the shoulders and squeezed him tight. 

“All right,” said Derek, feeling his face start to burn. He patted at Stiles’ shoulders. “All right, you’re welcome. You can—you can…” 

“Thank you. Really. I know I played the dead mom card on you, but you really didn’t have to.” 

“Yeah, well,” said Derek. “It’s for you.” 

Stiles pulled back. Despite Derek’s best efforts, he managed to catch Derek’s gaze—and hold it. Derek watched his expression melt from joyful to thoughtful. “Yeah?” said Stiles. 

“Yeah,” said Derek. 

Stiles reached out and tugged at the edge of Derek’s apron, pulling at it and making Derek sway towards him. 

“Oh,” said Stiles. “You know, I’m not staying in the city.” 

“No?”

“Nah, I’m moving back home. Shop or no shop, I think.”

“If it works, we’ll be competitors.” 

Stiles’ smile grew wider. He took hold of Derek’s apron with both hands and tugged at him until they faced each other. “We haven’t won anything yet.” 

He felt Stiles’ gaze on his mouth like a weight. He licked his lips. 

“I missed you,” said Stiles. 

Softly, Derek said, “Me too.”


End file.
